


only in my dreams

by clovekentwell



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Pining, The Careers, Yearning, but well no, does she die in the end? thats up for you to see, get rid of the longing, lesbian!glimmer, mostly just yearning, so stream only in my dreams by the marias, theyre brainwashed, this ship>>, was going to be based off ‘watch you sleep’ by girl in red, we cant let people know we yearn, why does this fandom hate sapphics, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27338965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clovekentwell/pseuds/clovekentwell
Summary: Glimmer is supposed to be on watch. (but shes a sapphic and god knows we cant do anything without pining over pretty girls with knives)listen
Relationships: Cato/Clove (Hunger Games), Clove/Glimmer (Hunger Games)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	only in my dreams

_baby stay here_  
_the whispers in the trees_  
_are getting near_  
_you're everything I need_  
_to bare this fear_  
_the demons in my bed_  
_they're always here_  
_it's only just a dream_

  
Glimmer’s supposed to be on the watch.

Well, it’s not like she isn’t watching. She’s just not watching... for enemies.

She trusts her senses and good hearing enough to not be so uptight. She knows she’s the weakest in the pack, and to screw up would be to get killed, but seriously. They’re the careers. What’s their biggest threat, Katniss, going to do up from that tree?

Nothing, Glimmer decides and goes back to watching.

Again, not for enemies. But for something else she can’t put her finger on.

Something about Clove.

Glimmer watches the morning sunshine on her skin, though it’s remarkable how _she_ seems to be the sun itself, lighting up everything else. They must’ve gotten it wrong when everything was made. The arena, the universe. There’s a sort of peacefulness in her face that Glimmer wants to stop looking at because it’s just so… _soft._ She watches Clove’s lips and thinks that the air deserves to be inhaled and exhaled by them forever. Clove does not deserve to fall from these games. But that would mean Glimmer’s demise.

_Shh._

_You don’t want to wake anyone up._

Clove’s small palm is clasped around a knife on her waist, ready at any moment to strike. The whole image seems too soft, too pure, too beautiful to see her ready to kill at any moment.

But that’s the thing about being a career.

If you’re silent, if you nod and smile, then set your jaw and raise your weapon, no one knows it's an act. It’s incorporated into your lifestyle because it _is_ a lifestyle. That’s why it's so easy to laugh with a friend, seconds after you’ve taken a life, a chapter, an array of stories, a person you don’t know, and never really will. It’s a living, this career business. A life of extremes. It’s not done alone for a reason, this life of yours now.

Your life that’s all for the games.

_Shh._

_You don’t want to wake anyone up._

She’s torn between 1) getting angry and lashing out on everything, kill all the Careers including the girl from two, and 2) getting angry and fucking kissing her. Glimmer grinds her teeth together as if that will make her stop thinking about the inevitable. Kissing her. That… that must be _it_ , she thinks. Her jaw hurts at the point and she looks away from Clove, which feels like she has to rip her eyes from their sockets in the process of doing so. You shouldn’t be thinking about kissing your enemies unless it’s a trap to slit their throat. Glimmer assumes that’s what people in the Capitol think is her strategy.

( It’s not. )

Fine. She admits she’s thinking about it. _Kissing her._ But she would never, _ever_ do it. She’ll leave those silly games to Lover Boy from Twelve. 

She pulls her knees to her chest, her back digging hard into the tree. It doesn’t make a single difference what Glimmer does now unless it’s kill and run.

Kill and run. Kill and run.

She’d stroke the top of Clove’s head but she’s pretty sure the girl would kill her.

“All we ever do is run,” Glimmer whispers.

And so she goes back to watching.

Just last night. She was laughing, asking whether or not we should just kill him off, but maybe that’s because secretly, Glimmer wants to be the star of the show. It’s not her fault she needs it all, but part of her, in the small hours of the morning, thinks it might be.

She doesn’t want to leave. She’s secretly dreading the fighting.

She just wants to watch Clove Kentwell sleep, and listen to her breathe.

But she’s pretty sure Clove hates her.

Training, when the shorter girl took her by the arm and into a bathroom stall. Glimmer hated what she expected when she felt her rough hand on her own soft skin.

“Would you stop preening in front of Cato?” 

Glimmer has a way of twisting her reality, and she wants to be real with Clove. Or at least see what’s fake.

“I have been.” _Truth._

“Yeah,” Clove scoffed. “You have. Do you want to know something?”

“Yes.” _Truth._ Glimmer wants to sit and talk with Clove until the world is sick of turning.

"I think you like him." _False._ So, so, so false.

“I don’t like Cato. And I-I’m not trying to steal him from you.” _Truth_ , but Clove only knows the half of it. She doesn’t know the meaning behind the flirty giggles and picture-perfect curls.

“If you want this alliance, you don’t touch him, understand?”

“Understood.” _Truth._ There’s no bark in Glimmer’s empty, meaningless, deadly bite. 

The two girls stared at each other a second longer until Clove slipped a small knife from her waistband. Glimmer may have flinched slightly, then mentally scolded herself. What was she to do when people pulled out knives and started _using_ them on her? Was Clove about to? “You know…” Clove deadpanned, ran her finger along the serrated edge of the knife, though her words held a ring of curiosity to them, “if you win the Games, they’ll sell you.” _Truth._ “Enobaria says they don’t care that you’re… 16?” Clove raises a thick but perfectly shaped dark eyebrow at Glimmer. When she is sure Clove won’t be using the knife on her, she gives her response. 

“I’m 15.” _Truth._

“15. They don’t care.” Clove sighs and taps her fingernail against the shiny blade. “She also said _I_ wouldn’t have to worry about that which I,” she scoffed, “I can’t say that’s a bad thing. I just feel like…” She swallows. “I still need the Capitol’s approval. My life is their idea. Well, when I put it that way it sounds bad. I want it to be. I don’t mind but-”

“I think I understand.” _Truth._ Glimmer more than understood, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to say that out loud. She could hardly let herself think that without feeling like a heathen.

“It’s still bad. And untrue.” _False._

“And untrue.” Glimmer confirms, though her fingers twitch. _False._

“So, One. Are you good at anything?”

Glimmer is unsure how to answer. She goes from almost killing her for flirting with her district partner, who Clove’s got a blatant crush on, to practically defaming the Capitol to small talk. Game strategy. It must be.

“I… what?”

“I mean, there’s got to be something more to you than just a pretty face if they let you volunteer.”

Glimmer felt like she was wearing the fire cape from the tribute parade--red and hot. Before she could control herself she blurted out, “You think I’m pretty?” 

Clove’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to say?”

Glimmer couldn’t tell what’s real or fake. The lines seem to blur when she’s in the Capitol. Maybe it’s never been that simple; True or False.

Clove twirled the knife in her fingers, tapped the flat part against Glimmer’s nose, and walked out of the stall.

“See you after lunch.”

And so she did. And Glimmer’s seeing her now. And every second she’s not talking to Clove feels like a waste of time. 

What’s the point if she’ll die anyway?

But she’s not dead yet. And right now she feels safer than she’s ever been, Clove by her side. She won’t accept Clove anywhere else. Not if Glimmer can help it.

A fake leaf falls off a fake tree and onto the real girl sleeping. The frail amber sheet brushes past the sliver of exposed skin on her stomach, where a small scar stands out from her tan skin.

Glimmer wonders how she got it.

Training? Did someone hurt her?

No.

She fell off a roof while she was looking at the stars, with some boy who’s not Glimmer.

Or she was dancing with some boy who’s not Glimmer and tripped.

Or she laughed so hard she toppled over.

Or she was standing on a ladder to pick a flower from a tree.

Because maybe she likes Cato.

Because maybe there’s no changing that.

Because maybe one of them will be dead before their hands brush again and their lips ever get the chance to.

Because all good things

must eventually fall, and scar, and bruise and bleed.

_Good things._

Because no one decent ever wins the games.

And Clove is more than decent.

She is _so_

_much_

_more._

Glimmer’s eyelids droop, the last thing she sees being the flickering image of Clove’s beautiful sleeping face as the two girls’ worlds go to rest in one another’s safest place, their own thoughts.

And when Glimmer wakes up,

it will all be what it has only ever been;

only in her dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading climmer nation


End file.
